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Recently a local photographer friend of mine, Kimberly Chiaris, on Facebook asked me to participate in a 5 day black and white photo challenge that was making the rounds among the photographers on the social platform. While many photographers were digging into their archives to share previously unseen work I used the opportunity to get back into a groove of doing photography on a more regular basis. Here is what I came up with:

Day 1: An experimental photo with my best friend, Holly, taken during the Orionid meteor shower. I wanted to see if it was possible to do a long exposure ending with a manual pop of light to light the subject and foreground. We took several images and I began playing with light painting with a flashlight. Holly and I really like to play and she frequently comes up with hilarious ideas during our shoots. This time she suggested kneeling down in the ditch showing just her floating head in the grass. Watching the images come up after processing we were laughing so hard we couldn't breathe.

Day 2: After spending some time out and about taking photos during the day I sat down to process and realized I had forgotten to turn my image stabilizing back on after my long exposure shoot, resulting in some blurry sub-par images. I decided at the last minute to do a self portrait. I teased my hair and played for an hour in a pitch black room with my speedlite flash. I chose to post this one as the little hole within the hair creates an optical illusion, confusing the eye and making the viewer wonder which way I'm actually facing. Being a fan of the odd this was my favorite image of the night.

Day 3: During a trip to a corn maze and Halloween event at a farm in Wellington with my best friend and her family, a pig got lose after being injured. It took four men to wrangle the pig and take it to get treatment. A more photo-journalistic image.

Day 4: An Unknown Creeper in the Woods. A long exposure light painting with a tiny flashlight. This was an unintentional collaboration with a stranger in the woods who was playing with his cell phone during the exposure. Happy Halloween.

Day 5: This was taken shortly after leaving a talk at The Center for Fine Art Photography with the photographer Cole Thompson called "Why Black and White?" I had learned a lot about long exposure techniques from his blog and this evening he shared more about his process. I used this information to change the way I shot and processed this image. I shot in Raw + monochrome so as to preview the black and white image during shooting, and used a tablet to dodge and burn after making my regular adjustments.